David Rex Galindo

Generations of scholars have studied the multifaceted experiences of the Franciscans in Mexico and how the Franciscan order shaped New Spain and the early Mexican republic. Recent scholarship has given long-overdue attention to the evangelized natives. Most of these works focus on a specific region or period, or on a particular aspect of Franciscan ministries in New Spain. A comprehensive account of the Franciscans in Mexico over the long term has been missing, until now.

This book analyzes the Franciscans’ engagement with native peoples, creole populations, the viceregal authorities, and the Spanish empire as a whole in order to offer a broad picture of Catholic evangelization in North America while keeping the Franciscans at the center of the story. Published in 2021, during commemoration of the quincentenary of the Spanish—and thus the Franciscan—presence in Mexico, the book brings together the research of junior and senior scholars from Mexico, Spain, and the United States on the long-enduring and far-reaching Franciscan presence in Mexico.

For 300 years, Franciscans were at the forefront of the spread of Catholicism in the New World. In the late seventeenth century, Franciscans developed a far-reaching, systematic missionary program in Spain and the Americas. After founding the first college of propaganda fide in the Mexican city of Querétaro, the Franciscan Order established six additional colleges in New Spain, ten in South America, and twelve in Spain. From these colleges Franciscans proselytized Indians in frontier territories as well as Catholics in rural and urban areas in eighteenth-century Spain and Spanish America.

To Sin No More is the first book to study these colleges, their missionaries, and their multifaceted, sweeping missionary programs. By focusing on the recruitment of non-Catholics to Catholicism as well as the deepening of religious fervor among Catholics, David Rex Galindo shows how the Franciscan colleges expanded and shaped popular Catholicism in the eighteenth-century Spanish Atlantic world. This book explores the motivations driving Franciscan friars, their lives inside the colleges, their training, and their ministry among Catholics, an often-overlooked duty that paralleled missionary deployments. Rex Galindo argues that Franciscan missionaries aimed to reform or "reawaken" Catholic parishioners just as much as they sought to convert non-Christian Indians.

RESUMEN – LA FRONTERA EN EL MUNDO HISPÁNICO


Soldados, misioneros, aventureros, delincuentes, burócratas, esclavos, y gente común –mujeres, hombres y niños, indígenas, europeos y africanos– fueron algunos de los arietes que ayudaron a ensanchar las fronteras del mundo hispánico moderno. Las fronteras se convirtieron en espacios geográficos abiertos, multiétnicos y multiculturales donde se produjeron fricciones y conflictos pero también importantes intercambios económicos, étnicos y culturales. La violencia y la coacción no sólo fueron el fruto de la confrontación sino también el cauce para que triunfasen fórmulas de entendimiento y mestizaje. Las fronteras terminaron generando unas condiciones de vida específicas plasmadas en unas peculiaridades intelectuales y socioculturales propias. 

La presente obra reúne a dieciocho investigadores de ambos lados del Atlántico que han utilizado la frontera como laboratorio de experimentación para estudiar las complejas relaciones sociales, económicas, políticas, culturales e ideológicas entre los diferentes grupos que caracterizaron a un mundo hispánico moderno lleno de vida, dinamismo y diversidad. Ya fuese en la península ibérica o en las diferentes regiones limítrofes del imperio español en América del Norte y del Sur, los ensayos ofrecen una respuesta a la evolución de la frontera en las sociedades modernas que surgieron a lo largo y ancho del mundo hispánico.

La perspectiva comparada que ofrece en todo momento el libro supone una enriquecedora mirada sobre el fenómeno de la frontera en España y en el imperio que forjó en América con un enfoque geográfico y temático diverso.

This essay discusses various forms of Hispanic-Indigenous labor relations on New Spain's northern frontiers, with a focus on 17th-century New Mexico and late colonial California. The article reconstructs how local practices of exploitation and abuse took various forms and eventually acquired normative values. In doing so, it offers an analysis of the interconnectivity of practices and norms in labor relations in such frontier territories. The essay takes historical, normative, and etymological approaches to reveal the diversity of labor systems and forms of coercion then present in New Mexico and California as well as the various conceptual and normative foundations behind this plethora of systems.

This article analyzes the role of women in the public space of a colonial frontier territory in Spanish America, focusing on the female syndics of the Franciscan missions of Valdivia, Chile near the end of the colonial era. The article develops the case study of Clara de Eslava y Lope, who, as a syndic, administered financial matters for the Chillán Franciscan College for the Propagation of the Faith in the Valdivia missions. While Clara de Eslava y Lope’s role as a syndic for the Franciscans was not unique in the Hispanic Catholic world, this essay sheds light on the position of female syndics, largely ignored by colonial and early modern historiographies. Through the lens of female syndics, this paper argues that women fulfilled an essential role within the Valdivia Hispanic-Creole population in the late colonial era, influenced not only by their economic power, but also their social recognition, education, and marital status as widows.

This article analyzes missionary Fray Pedro González de Agüeros’s writings on frontier missions in the Chiloé archipelago in southern Chile held by the Franciscan College of Propaganda Fide in Ocopa at the end of the 18th century. González de Agüeros supported the application of the Bourbon reforms on his college’s frontier missions. Through his writings, I explore the nature of the relationship between the monarchy, the state and the frontier territories in Spanish America in the late colonial period. I further examine his adherence to a reformist agenda that defended the militarization, socioeconomic progress, population settlement, and public education in the frontiers of empire as a means to improve the local situation and royal control as well as to continue Spanish expansion along the Pacific coast and islands. Focusing mainly on the province of Chiloé, south of the kingdom of Chile, and the territories to the South, the missionary's work demonstrates an adaptation between the religious discourse and the new administrative and political realities that characterize the relationship between the frontiers of Spanish America, the Hispanic monarchy and the state during the final period of Bourbon reforms. In this sense, I intend to demonstrate that González de Agüeros’s ideas echoed contemporary discourses of political and economic reform in Spanish America typical of the Bourbon reforms.

This article analyses the material economy of the Franciscan College of propaganda fide of San Ildefonso de Chillán during the second half of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century. It focuses on the economic conditions from monetary and material perspectives, in relation to the corporal and spiritual sustenance of friars and missionaries. Our objective is to study the concept of poverty practised by Chillán misssionaries during a time of economic changes in the Kingdom of Chile. We have consulted documentation from the repositories of the Propaganda Fide Archives in Rome, the General Archive of the Indies, the National Historical Archive in in Madrid, and the Franciscan archives in Santiago de Compostela and Santiago de Chile, which enabled us to unveil
the material reality of the Chillán Mission College during the transitional period from the 18th to the 19th century. Methodologically speaking, we contrasted the ideal of poverty established in its Rules and Statutes, which rigorously guided the conduct of the friars, and the daily reality of their lives as illustrated by their letters and reports. This documentation reveals not only their prosperous material living conditions, but also their questioning of poverty, and the guilt that sometimes accompanied the latter. Disputes over land, money and property in general existed, aside from the provisions of its Rule and Statutes.

This chapter analyses the use and circulation of some theological and canonical ideas from Martín de Azpilcueta's (1492-1586) opus in New Spain during the first century after the fall of the Nahua capital Mexico-Tenochtitlan in 1521. I aim to assess Azpilcueta's relevance in creating knowledge in 16th-century Mexico. To do so, I have tracked his main work-Manual de confesores y penitentes, and its Latin translation Enchiridion sive Manuale confessariorum-in Franciscan library inventories and confessional texts produced in Mexico. My emphasis is placed on the 1585 Directorio para confesores and works by late 16th-century Franciscan friars like Fray Juan de la Concepción and Fray Juan Bautista de Viseo. By scrutinising Azpilcueta in these texts, I want to show that Dr. Navarrus, as he was also known, was effectively present in local libraries in colonial Mexico, as well as hypothesise the use of his works by those who prepared their confessional handbooks. Because these confessional texts addressed behavioural conducts within Indigenous and Hispanic peoples, Azpilcueta, even if indirectly, contributed to the constitution of normative orders within the colonial regime. I thus conclude that Dr. Navarrus' theological and canonical knowledge left a normative imprint in 16thand early 17th-century New Spain.

Entre 1812 y 1825, el misionero franciscano fray Jerónimo Boscana escribió
lo que los investigadores consideran el primer estudio etnográfico de los
indígenas de California. Fray Jerónimo había llegado a la provincia de
Alta California en 1806 desde su Colegio de Propaganda Fide de San
Fernando en la Ciudad de México. Su objetivo, al igual que el de sus
compañeros de hábito, era evangelizar y convertir a los indígenas de
California a la religión y cultura hispanas. Tras un periplo por varias
misiones, en 1811 fue transferido a la misión de San Luis Rey y en
1814 a San Juan Capistrano, donde permaneció hasta 1826. Fue en
estas dos misiones del sur de California donde investigó y escribió su
“Relacion historica de la creencia, usos, costumbres, y extravagancias
de los Indios de esta mision de S. Juan Capistrano, llamada la nacion
Acâgchemem”, un manuscrito que se encuentra en la actualidad en la
Biblioteca Nacional de Francia en París y del que se sospecha existió
otra versión posterior, hoy perdida.

Legal and Moral Theological Literature and the Formation of Early Modern Ibero-America Editors: Thomas Duve and Otto Danwerth Knowledge of the pragmatici sheds new light on pragmatic normative literature (mainly from the religious sphere), a genre crucial for the formation of normative orders in early modern Ibero-America. Long underrated by legal historical scholarship, these media-manuals for confessors, catechisms, and moral theological literature-selected and localised normative knowledge for the colonial worlds and thus shaped the language of normativity. The eleven chapters of this book explore the circulation and the uses of pragmatic normative texts in the Iberian peninsula, in New Spain, Peru, New Granada and Brazil. The book reveals the functions and intellectual achievements of pragmatic literature, which condensed normative knowledge, drawing on medieval scholarly practices of 'epitomisation' , and links the genre with early modern legal culture. Readership All interested in the legal history, the history of knowledge and book history in early modern times, especially with regard to colonial Ibero-America.

As one of America’s most important missionaries, Junípero Serra is widely recognized as the founding father of California’s missions.  It was for that work that he was canonized in 2015 by Pope Francis.  Less well known, however, is the degree to which Junípero Serra embodied the social, religious and artistic currents that shaped Spain and Mexico across the 18th century. Further, Serra’s reception in American culture in the 19th and 20th centuries has often been obscured by the controversies surrounding his treatment of California’s Indians. This volume situates Serra in the larger Spanish and Mexican contexts within which he lived, learned, and came of age. Offering a rare glimpse into Serra’s life, these essays capture the full complexity of cultural trends and developments that paved the way for this powerful missionary to become not only California’s most polarizing historical figure but also North America’s first Spanish colonial saint.
https://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520295391

Este artículo analiza los escritos del misionero franciscano fray Pedro González de Agüeros sobre las misiones de frontera del Colegio de Propaganda Fide de Ocopa en el archipiélago de Chiloé al sur de Chile a finales del siglo XVIII. González de Agüeros fue un defensor del programa reformista borbónico en las fronteras misioneras de su colegio. A través de sus escritos, exploro la naturaleza de las relaciones entre monarquía, Estado y frontera en el período tardío colonial y su adherencia a las tesis reformistas que defendían la militarización fronteriza, el avance socioeconómico de las periferias, el poblamiento demográfico, y la educación pública para mejorar la situación local y de la monarquía y continuar la expansión a lo largo de la costa y las islas del Pacífico. Centrado principalmente en la provincia de Chiloé, al sur del reino de Chile, y los territorios más al sur, la obra del misionero evidencia una adaptación entre el discurso religioso a las nuevas realidades administ...